Just fifteen mints of your time

The mint family of plants (Lamiaceae) is a large and diverse group that is a favorite among beekeepers. Many members of the family are extremely attractive to pollinators, and if you choose your plants carefully, you can feed your bees and harvest a crop of culinary herbs as well. Plants in the mint family include oregano, marjoram, basil, sage, rosemary, peppermint, spearmint, catnip, thyme, lavender, and horehound.

Members of this family are distinguished by square stems and leaves in opposite pairs. The flowers are often small in whorled, spike-like clusters, but some species, like Monarda, have large flowers that attract hummingbirds. Many are aromatic and a number of species have colorful or variegated foliage, such as Solenostemon (coleus) and some Salvia.

In all, there are roughly 7000 species in the family divided into 236 genera. In the chart below, I’ve selected 15 genera that are readily available, easy to grow, attractive to pollinators, and widely recognized. The growth habits and flowering times are approximations and quite variable. The individual species and your local growing conditions will influence the growth habit, the flowering time, the amount of nectar produced, and whether the plants will overwinter.

Here in western Washington, I use oregano as “bait” for photographing a large variety of bees. For sheer number of bees, agastache has been the clear winner.

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To this amazingly diverse list of mints I would add the inconspicuous Lamium purpurea, deadnettle, a winter annual* weed that starts blooming around here in Jan/Feb as soon as there’s any sun. The bees love it. Despite the bland mauve blossoms, the pollen is dayglo orange, so you’ll know if your bees have been in it. It seems to be an important early forage crop. And as a weed, it’s not bad: *it sprouts in November, and dies about the time the soil is warm enough to set out summer garden stuff. I will send you an image if you’d like to show others. Thanks for the list, we’ll use it for the library project!

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Bees are more than a hobby;
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Why Honey Bee is Two Words

Regardless of dictionaries, we have in entomology a rule for insect common names that can be followed. It says: If the insect is what the name implies, write the two words separately; otherwise run them together. Thus we have such names as house fly, blow fly, and robber fly contrasted with dragonfly, caddicefly, and butterfly, because the latter are not flies, just as an aphislion is not a lion and a silverfish is not a fish. The honey bee is an insect and is preeminently a bee; “honeybee” is equivalent to “Johnsmith.”

—From Anatomy of the Honey Bee by Robert E. Snodgrass

State Insects

The non-native European Honey Bee is the state insect of:

Arkansas

Georgia

Kansas

Louisiana

Maine

Mississippi

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Nebraska

New Jersey

North Carolina

Oklahoma

South Dakota

Tennessee

Utah

Vermont

West Virginia

Wisconsin

Not one native bee is a state insect. The closest relative of a North American native bee to make the list is the Tarantula Hawk Wasp, the state insect of New Mexico.

Update! Minnesota now has a state bee as well as a state insect. Bombus affinis, the Rusty-Patched Bumble Bee, has been so honored. Good work, Minnesota!

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Honey Bee Suite is dedicated to honey bees, beekeeping, wild bees, other pollinators, and pollination ecology. It is designed to be informative and fun, but also to remind readers that pollinators throughout the world are endangered. Although they may seem small and insignificant, pollinators are vital to anyone who eats.